News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
Fifth grader Tyler Sullivan missed school to meet President Obama, who gave him a hand-written, signed excuse note on presidential stationary. It says, “Mr. Ackerman — Please Excuse Tyler … he was with me! <signed Barack Obama>”. How cool is that!
Link: http://gawker.com/…
(via Neatorama)
[NOTE: I usually ignore this type of stuff, labeling it as pseudo-science, but the source is reliable.]
According to the linked article, faster than light travel is not only theoretically possible but is something that we might be able to implement. This would change everything. The method, known as an Alcubierre drive, hinges on the fact that we can’t reach the speed of light while moving through spacetime, but spacetime itself does not have that restriction (for instance, the universe has expanded much more quickly than lightspeed). There are still major technical challenges, however, as the energy requirement is very high—the energy in a mass the size of the Voyager 1 probe is, I believe, much more than any nuclear bomb every created.
Thanks to O.Roy for this link.
Link: http://www.space.com/…
On Wednesday, a SpaceX cargo rocket successfully delivered its cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). While it wasn’t without problems, all I can say is, “It’s about time—now do it again!” Note that this isn’t actually the first SpaceX launch to the ISS, but the previous one was a test to verify that the rocket would actually work as designed.
Link: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/…
(via Bureau 42)
ATM card skimming is where a thief goes to an ATM and attaches a card reader on top of the real reader. This fake reader, or skimmer, passes cards on to the ATM, but in the process it gets the card information and stores it for later retrieval. In addition, the thief installs some type of hidden camera to record videos of the cardholders typing their PINs. These two items (the card info and the PIN) are all a criminal needs—he creates a duplicate card and has the PIN to go with it. The bank thinks it’s you. What I find most interesting are the sophistication of the skimmers and how realistic they look. It can be very difficult to spot a fake. The linked article discusses card skimming in detail, and I recommend reading it.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
For those who haven’t made the plunge into Twitter, the linked article explains the basics in a clear and understandable manner. Once you’ve finished reading it, you’ll understand what @ChadCloman and #DenverBroncos mean.
Link: http://www.komando.com/…
This year’s Ig Nobel prizes were awarded on September 20th. Here are some of the winners:
Cigarette taxes are typically justified by earmarking them to cover the increased health care costs for smokers, but I think they’re really imposed in an effort to make the cost so high that smokers will quit. In New York City smokers pay an insanely high cigarette tax rate, $6.46 per pack, yet a recent study shows “no decline in smoking among low-income smokers, despite tax increases since 2003”.
Link: http://dailycaller.com/…
Biometric identification systems such as fingerprint readers, retina scanners, etc. are supposed to make it harder for people to hack your computer. But in the case of the UPEK Protector Suite, the opposite is true. This is due to unsecure programming practices that make it trivial for someone to learn your Windows password. See the linked article for more information.
Link: http://blog.crackpassword.com…
(via Ars Technica)
Texans will soon be able to legally drive at 85 mph, on a highway between Austin and San Antonio. It will be the highest speed limit in the country.
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
(via Slashdot)
According to this report, there are 6 billion cellphone subscriptions worldwide, with about 75 percent of the world’s population having at least one cellphone. Think about that for a moment. A technology that first became commercially available about 30 years ago has spread to more than 5 billion people.
Link: http://dailycaller.com/…
This heavy lift ship, the VB 10,000 by Versabar, is known as “The Claw”. It’s used to lift sunken oil rig platforms from the ocean floor and has a rated lift capacity of 7500 tons. What gets me is that they probably pay someone to operate this machine—I’m pretty sure that any red-blooded American male would gladly pay them for the privilege of using this equipment.
Link: http://gizmodo.com/…
(via Neatorama)
Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass that’s used in many smartphones and tablets, has come up with a new product called Willow Glass. It’s paper-thin and scratch resistant, yet can be rolled into a circle with a 2-inch radius. It’ll be interesting to see what applications they find for this new technology.
Link #1: http://www.corning.com/…
Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…
